Chinese tech site Expreview reports that the six core Intel Core i7-8700K CPU has its overclocking potentials gimped once again as the company has decided to use lower quality TIM rather than solder.

The article states that while the chip itself is excellent and can overclock beyond 4.8GHz without dramatic increases in voltage, heat will be the greatest barrier to achieving this. While Expreview hasn’t posted pictures of the CPU de-lidded, the author attributes the thermal compound as the culprit, stating that the thermal compound applied under the lid is poor quality TIM rather than solder. As a result, those who want overclocks beyond 4.8 GHz or 5 GHz will [...]

Ever since Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPUs launched back in 2012, Intel has consistently caught flak for using cheap TIM (Thermal Interface Material) to interface the CPU die with the IHS (Integrated Heat Sink). This unfortunately created a necessity for those looking for even decent overclocks to have to remove the IHS, or de-lid the CPU.

With AMD’s Ryzen CPU launching soon, many have wondered what type of TIM (Thermal Interface Material) AMD is using with their upcoming processors. In a recent video posted to YouTube, German overclocker der8auer not only demonstrates how to de-lid an AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, but also provides us with the good news that AMD is using [...]

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July 30, 2017

MSI GS40 6QE Phantom Review

MSI’s New 14″ Portable Gaming Powerhouse

With the introduction of more power efficient CPUs and GPUs along with the introduction of more flexible storage form factors such as M.2, the once massive gaming laptop is now significantly smaller. Over the past couple years, MSI has been among the pioneers of the new trend of ever shrinking gaming laptops, introducing an array of portable systems including the GS70, GS60, GS30 and now the GS40.

Today we’ll be reviewing MSI’s latest GS40 Phantom which is the 14″ variant of MSI’s GS series of gaming laptops. The GS series gaming laptops have always been portable gaming notebooks with high powered [...]

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October 8, 2015

Fallout 4 PC Recommended Specs and Minimum Specs Revealed!

Earlier today Bethesda showed off the Fallout 4 PC recommended specs and they are pretty intensive, which should be a good sign. Let’s run them down, and I can give my opinion of it.

So, first off, the choice of CPUs seems just a bit confusing, The i5 should be at least 10% better than the Phenom even with the clock disadvantage. Perhaps the game just needs a modern [...]

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March 26, 2015

Review: iBUYPOWER SpecOps Stream Machine

iBUYPOWER SpecOps Program Project #1

Back at CES earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to meet a couple guys from the iBUYPOWER team who were very excited to talk to us about their new SpecOps Program, a new initiative started by their R&D and marketing staff to help customers choose optimal system configurations for specific use cases. If anyone has ever purchased a system from a boutique vendor like iBUYPOWER, you’ll know that you don’t get much guidance in terms of parts selection. You simply go into the system configurator, do your research, and choose your own parts. The SpecOps Program however, helps guide customers through this process in a transparent [...]

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February 23, 2015

CPCR Server Upgrade 2015: New Hardware Overview

Self-Hosted Bliss

When I originally founded Custom PC Review back in 2012, it was nothing more than a small personal blog running off some run of the mill shared hosting. Since then the site has grown quite a bit, and along with the type of infrastructure hosting the site as well.

The first type of hosting infrastructure for CPCR was shared hosting. While shared hosting was a good, cheap option to get started, the site faced constant crashes as soon as any surge of traffic rolled in. Several months after starting the site I was facing more downtime than uptime, so I decided it was time to upgrade to a VPS. Unlike shared hosting where tons of sites are all hosted on the [...]

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December 23, 2016

Review: Syber Vapor Xtreme Gaming PC Console

[section label=1. Introduction]
The Rise of the PC Gaming Console

Way back at CES 2014, Valve made a huge splash at the show announcing their intent to popularize PC gaming in the living room. In order to do this, Valve was building a custom Steam OS which would either be installed by an end user to their own gaming PC, or be bundled with Steam Machines – Valve approved gaming PCs manufactured by their PC OEM partners.

While Valve and their PC OEM partners created a lot of hype during the show, the Steam Machine concept has pretty much fizzled out in the past year as Steam have made no big announcements regarding the status of their Steam OS or Steam Machines. With PC [...]

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February 13, 2015

Review: SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Flash Drive for Professionals

When it comes to professional flash memory products, there definitely aren’t very many product lineups as popular as SanDisk’s Extreme PRO series – and for good reason too.

SanDisk’s Extreme PRO series products tend to feature not only high performance and capacity, but also industry leading warranties that simply aren’t available from competitors. While SanDisk has had Extreme PRO series memory cards for many years, SanDisk has recently begun expanding the Extreme PRO lineup to SSDs and now flash drives as well to provide professionals an easy choice when selecting fast and reliable flash storage.

SanDisk [...]

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February 13, 2015

Review: Silicon Power Armor A30 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive

Ultra Rugged Portable Storage

Though cloud storage’s getting a lot of buzz, there’s really no simpler or faster way to transfer data from point A to B than a portable, external drive. For digital artists, video editors, and enthusiasts alike, portable hard drives and flash drives have become the most convenient way to backup or transfer data at a low cost.

While portable storage has allowed us to easily backup or transfer our data, the increase in storage capacities also means we’re now travelling with a lot more of our previous data than ever before. Despite this, we’ve seen far too many folks with their life and soul on a single fragile [...]

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July 30, 2017

ASUS Radeon R7 240, R7 250 Review

Sub-$100 Graphics

As an enthusiast hardware review site, we generally don’t review low end graphics hardware, but it’s understandable that not everyone needs to have the latest $500+ graphics cards and it’s always interesting to see just how far you could get with a sub-$100 budget.

Today we’ll be reviewing two entry level Radeon R7 series graphics cards from ASUS, the ASUS Radeon R7 240 and R7 250. In terms of specs, both the ASUS Radeon R7 240 and Radeon R7 250 are equipped with 28nm Oland GPUs with a choice between the Radeon R7 250 containing a fully unlocked Oland GPU (aka Oland XT) paired with faster GDDR5 memory, or the Radeon R7 240 with a [...]